 I “walked the boards” for 16 years. When I learned my lines I was in the habit understanding the meanings of the words I was to speak on stage, and thier origins. Mandatory when performing Shakespeare. Etomology, the origin of words, is probably one of the single most important of studies because it connects us to our ancestors in a very personal way. The subject is ignored in grade school, when we could really use the help. That knowledge has too much history associated with it. You have to stumble onto the information on your own. The best example I can give you is “The Pol.”
After the Dark Ages, the first thousand years of Christian rule, the feudal system was firmly entrenched in Europe. By Shakespeare’s day, and throughout the middle ages, all the surfs, the Serbs, and Slavs5 referred to thier landlord as the “Pol.” It means the Head. And life was futile, serving the Pol, who answered only to the king. as long as he owned enough money and property. The joke was, the Pol always stuck it to you. In reality, all the surfs were executed by their landlords on poles. Fashioned from the Maple tree. Death came quickly for the lucky. The heart was pierced through the back or chest. The body was then propped up on his property line.
The unlucky ones were set on top of a finely sharpened pole, anus first, and over the next three days gravity pulled on the body as the point worked its way up through the abdominal region and into the chest cavity. Until the heart was finally pierced, ending the “Pol’s” agony. Mayday, May 1, Russia’s New Year, was the only day in the year the European Pol wasn’t allowed to kill his slaves. The people partied around the May pole, supposedly to honor the Pol, but in reality, they were making fun of him.
“Mayday, Mayday”, the pilot cries
Vlad Draco’s son, Vlad Dracola “The Impaler” was the worst of the lot. He poled people in his own castle and while he was eating he would mixed the blood with his food. Every generation since, in story and in film, is told of the legend of Dracula, “the blood sucking landlord.” The Pope was one of Dracula’s most ardent supporters because most of his victims were Muslims. So the cross and holy water were never his enemy. While imprisonded he empailed rodents. And over the objections of the Pope, the Muslims finally beheaded him. The only way to finally end Dracula’s reign of terror.
Poland literally means the Pol’s land, or land of the Pols, or even Poles. Our culture picked up the shaft, the one finger salute, from the Polish. Some Europeans express it with a slap to a raised forearm, others brush their chin with their fingers. Even our north American gestures, the O.K. and thumbs up signs, are still practiced as a derogatory in many European and Asian communities even today. But it all means “...may you be shafted by the Pol.”
“The Pol hired a Pol’s magician, the Politician...to play the Pol’s tricks in the King’s court...so as to gain favor for the Pol’s... Policy.” They pointed to the “Pol’s ticks” and the Pol’s lice” that kept them oppressed. Today it’s Politics and Police. Poliz, Policia...through out the world, it’s the same root. Police and Policy are really the same word, the Pol’s, I see! Or the Pol’s Ice. He demanded his “just ice.” “He’s in the cooler”, or “on ice”...is derived from this interpretation. Pol Pot of Cambodia fulfilled his title as “the Pol, Pot”. The Polit-beau, InterPol. When the Pol is looting his people, we can say he’s “polluting”.
Now, to show you it’s all the truth...In the beginning, when our nation was new, only white male landowners could vote on Tuesday. If you lost your land, you lost your right to vote. Unless, of course, you had lots of money, then you could buy your vote. Question: Where did all those land owners go to vote? Clue: We still go there today. Answer: The Pol’s Booth! You can’t blame the politicians for practicing their job description. This isn’t taught in grade school because we would have no respect for the institutions merely for the outrageous violence perpetrated against our ancestors by insensitive land owners and governments. All of this was blessed by western religion.
Now take it a step further. Any word with pol in it is now suspect. Metropolis is based on the Greek word Polis, the City. The center of the Polis stood the pole, where the city’s policies, parties, celebrations, pillaging and executions took place, under the flag. In the Feudal system the top of society referred to themselves as “Polite Society“, meaning they were “light around the Pol.” We were the Pol’s “pee ons” so we became his Pe pole. The letters O and P were switched to mask its origins. I told this story to a truck driver at four in the morning while towing a friends car home. He thought for a second and said “Oh my God, Napoleon. That’s right”, I said, “Le Polion…the Polian”. We had a great laugh exiting the freeway, “ I quipped, Yeah, and his last name was pronounced Bone Apart.”
A surf had a tax base of 90% and more. The Roman’s found they could successfully tax any given state up to 90%. If, however, the rate went any higher, would kick it into a net loss and ultimately the society would crumble. Americans pay 36% in federal taxes alone. The IRS is a collection agency for a corporation called the Federal Reserve. Which incidentally has nothing to do with our federal government, except, that the corporate board loans us money we’ve already paid them to print.
All the money then collected by the IRS is turned over to that Federal Reserve Board and thier CEO. This is the same group we owe that Reagan/Bush & Bush/Quale $7 trillion debt to. Add to that the Bush/Cheney deficits, the largest in human history. "We the people" never see a penny from the IRS, our government runs on other revenue. We have yet to addressed the state and federal road taxes which is half of what you currently pay at the gas pump.
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The government doesn’t react for the people, because federal profits increase as the price of fuel increases. This is how and why the government is owned by the oil corporations. Now, what about the hidden taxes, such as shipping and it’s multiple taxations.
You don’t realize how many times your taxed. Every time parts are shipped to manufacturers and then shipped to packaging houses, on to distributors, to the retailer and finally, to you. You wind up paying all the shipping and road taxes long before the product winds up in your hands. Now, every time you buy, you pay a tax to the state, and to the city as well. At this point We’re approaching a 69% or more tax rate. This is one of the main reasons our forefathers fought the revolution. We weren’t going to pay England’s corrupt corporate tax base. Today King George has been replaced by international corporations, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the United States government, which as I write is a broken machine and works almost exclusively for “the haves and the have mores”. Compared to European standards, we Americans are paying far more into the system and getting far less in return. The Pol’s legend, the House of Dracula, still touches us today.
Oxford
Oxford University was the first post dark ages institution of learning in Europe and was established on the river Thames. In those days, when you said a stud... you ment an ox. They were synanimous. To “ford a river” or to “ford a stream” is to “cross it”. It literally means “stud crossing” So when a young man comes to the banks of this university or “one verse city... their verse”, he was dubbed an entry level stud. An “ent stud” for short. Then as he forged the river of knowlege, they switched his title to “stud ent.”
images and double honors
Commissioned by Thadius Taylor, the president of the Royal Shakespeare Society of America West, In 1978. He invited me first, to participate in celebration of the year of Shakespeare in portraiture. The international icon was Picasso’s Portrait. The Portrait was created in two weeks. Later he invited me, as executive producer, to reinvent a character called the Gaoler. It was America’s first professional production of the “Two Noble Kinsmen”. A play which had been proven to have been penned by the Bard. Produced at the Globe Playhouse, on Kings Rd, in West Hollywood, CA. The play will be included in his complete folio. I’m honored to be an original professional American cast member. Which opened to rave reviews and played to full houses through out the run.
subliminal images
All the titles of his poems, sonnets, and plays are written on his face. The portrait is based on a line from Hamlet. Act 4, scene 4, lines 32 through 66. “Now, whether it be bestial oblivion. Or some craven scruple of thinking too precisely on the event?” Do we go the way of base sensuality, or into the realm of sensitive reasoning?
His chin represents earth, mach 2 (post Orpheus Collision, barren and sterile. The goatee begins as DNA spiral ladders and turns into seaweed. His lower lip is a wave about to bring vegetation to land. His upper lip is a landscape. The cleft is made up of an upside down. Question mark. The mark is made up of a cartoon Brontosaurus face. What happened to the dinosaurs?
The black area above represents a 65 million year old cataclysmic event. A comet struck just north of the Yucatan peninsula creating the gulf of Mexico and the North American delta. Out of the dust, 62 million years later, on the ball of the nose you will find a skull. Lucy, an Ethiopian archaeological dig set our lineage to about 3.2 million years. She was named after a song that was playing as they uncovered her...“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”
Above each brow is a mask. The right is comedy and the left tragedy. Under the left eye you will find a line from Hamlet. “The time is out of joint.” And under the other, the comedy...“Nay, lets go together.” The tear is of joy. One of our greatest emotions is the capacity to be so happy we cry. We will learn of his joy a little later.
His nose represents human evolution. One evolutionary development signaled our independence, the opposable thumb. At the top of his nose you will find a statue of liberty, her crown is the human hand.
Below, we stand in the now, at the crossroads of our existence. Trapped by gravity between time and infinity, both of which intersect at the bridge of his nose.
Time, the hour glass, surrounds his forehead, siphons at the bridge and fills the bottom, his cheeks and chin. Infinity then surrounds the eyes and intersects at the siphon. The sands of time are running out. Which way do we go?
To the comedy where we show great wisdom, (stage right) his wisdom lines, or do we go the way of ignorance? The tragedy mask, above the left brow, is made of double masks, one superimposed on the other.
The concussion effect of a nuclear blast, the last instant of consciousness, and the realization we didn’t have the wisdom, we broke the DNA connection with the future.
5 A Slav was a slave and a Serb a servant. Yugo“slavia” |
